SOPA: Shouting in the Dark

Sometimes it can be easier to think in the dark, or easier to yell. The blackout today of the English-language Wikipedia pages, and Boing Boing and a string of others, had that effect. Even Google averted its eyes, or at least its icon, covering it with a black strip. The action was a protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect I.P. Act; Nicholas Thompson explained this morning why both are very bad ideas—masses of restraint that, in the name of protecting intellectual property, would cause an entire marketplace of ideas to seize up and then fall apart. The protest itself was an act of faith in politics as it is meant to be practiced. Until now, as Thompson points out, whether a legislator supported the bills or not tended to have little to do with ideology and very much to do with campaign donations. By shutting down the sites, the tech companies weren’t exerting economic pressure on anyone; they were setting up a black backdrop for a placard that said, in short, read more, and then write to your legislator. There was some information Wikipedia freely gave out today, in the conviction that it would be put to use: if you entered a zip code, you go to the names, contact information, and Twitter handles for your congressman and senators. That is all good to know.

So did it work? So far, so good: three Senators, Marco Rubio, John Cornyn, and Orrin Hatch, and a clutch of congressmen have changed their positions. Hatch said that the bill had turned out to be “not ready for prime time”—in a few years, will anyone know what hours, and what medium, that expression originally referred to? It has the markings of a future lexicological trivia question; for now, though, it is simply a reminder that many conflicting eras and interests are represented in this fight.

As I do every Wednesday, I’ve posted over at Daily Comment, in this case about a law that has been cited frequently today alongside SOPA and PIPA: the National Defense Authorization Act. That’s another one that could use some shouting; the fear there is that decisions about detention, guilt, and innocence that ought to be made in open courts will instead be made in the dark.

Amy Davidson Sorkin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2014.